This invention relates to tire servicing apparatus, and, more particularly, tire servicing apparatus for servicing extremely large tires such as those employed in farm tractors, off-the-road trucks, mining equipment, etc.
Prior art of possible relevance includes the commonly assigned Zrostlik U.S. Pat. No. 3,858,735 and U.S. Pat. No. 3,334,864 to Strang et al.
Recent years have been a substantial increase in the size of various off-the-road vehicles of the type generally employed in construction or mining operations as, for example, of-the-road high capacity trucks. Moreover, other vehicles, such as farm tractors are increasingly being made in larger sizes. As the size of such vehicles has been increased, it has also been necessary to increase the size of the tires employed on such vehicles to provide the capability for carrying increased loads. As a result, there are vehicles in existence which are provided with pneumatic tires having diameters well in excess of six feet and weighing several thousand pounds.
Such tires, as any other type of tire, require servicing, but due to their bulk and weight, a great deal of effort is required. Consequently, there have evolved proposals for a variety of tire gripping and manipulating equipment for handling such tires during servicing. Representative of such proposals is the above identified Zrostlik patent and the commonly assigned application of Zrostlik, Ser. No. 351,776, entitled "Tire Changing Apparatus" and filed Apr. 16, 1973, now U.S. Pat. No. 3,927,778.
In addition, through improved tire manufacturing techniques, the size of tubeless tire is also being progressively increased to the point where tubeless tires of a size readily adaptable to servicing with apparatus such as described in the above identified Zrostlike patent and patent application are available.
One typical difficulty encountered with the servicing of tubeless tires of any size is the seating of the beads on the rim. Tubeless tires cannot be inflated until bead seating occurs for the reason that air introduced through a valve stem or the like will escape between the bead and the rim if the beads are not seated thereon.
While there have been many proposals of bead seating equipment for use in seating the beads of tubeless tires of small sizes, such as those typically found on passenger cars, satisfactory and economical means for seating the beads of relatively large tubeless tires have generally been absent from the marketplace.